Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#51

Post by leonroy » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:27 AM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #43

Getting a bit bored of leaks, press releases and even specs. The proof of a CPU is in how it benchmarks across real workloads. We're 2-3 weeks away from global release. People buying components NOW are exactly the sort of people AMD should be working their socks off to stop buying Intel parts. But instead of any firm performance figures, we have rumour. The only reason I can imagine AMD is still keeping the press und…

I think the issue might more be related to yields and distribution. Even when AMD were outpacing Intel (many years back) they struggled to meet demand and manufacture enough chips.

There was a great article back then too about why Apple and Dell weren't going all in on AMD chips and whilst sweeteners from Intel is part of it, a lot of it had to do with Dell or Apple's typical volume far outpacing what AMD could reliably manufacture.

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#52

Post by fb03 » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:34 AM UTC

rwg wrote: post #32

guitarbill wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's why so many people go with the older HP microservers. Super cheap, nice form factor, just add ECC RAM and HDDs.

I have an HP MicroServer N40L that I bought several years ago, and it's almost a doorstop now. Its CPU (dual-core 1.5 GHz AMD Turion II Neo) is slow and doesn't support AES-NI. It maxes out at 8 GB of RAM (16 GB of RAM if the stars align and it likes the RAM you bought). It has one GigE port, and SATA ports are limited to 3 Gbps (SATA II). Expansion is limited to an eSATA port, USB 2.0 ports, a low-profile PCIe 2.0 x…

That'd be adequate for a simple nas (samba/dav) and maybe running a 24/7 torrent client with a simple web interface but that's it, yeah.

Still, a box is a box :P

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#53

Post by vegabook » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:43 AM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #43

Getting a bit bored of leaks, press releases and even specs. The proof of a CPU is in how it benchmarks across real workloads. We're 2-3 weeks away from global release. People buying components NOW are exactly the sort of people AMD should be working their socks off to stop buying Intel parts. But instead of any firm performance figures, we have rumour. The only reason I can imagine AMD is still keeping the press und…

an i7 6900k costs more than 1000 dollars. The top spec AMD chip which is supposed to be within spitting distance, also 8/16, is less than half that price. It's going to take a real benchmark letdown for these AMD chips not to fly out the door. The floating point (AVX-256) will not be competitive, but the rest of the chip will have a tough time NOT being a success at the leaked prices, even if it proves to be 20% or so slower. Recall that for one of the huge markets, gaming, the Vulkan and DX12 APIs make much better use of multithreaded code so core counts suddenly matter much more.

Anyway I think the Internet is already primed for Intel still to have the edge on single core perf. Not a single AMD-controlled benchmark has not been amply caveated as such by the coverage so far, with good doses of scepticism, just like your post. Nobody's expecting parity IMO, they're just expecting something competitive, at the right price. And the price is half.

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#54

Post by kogepathic » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:48 AM UTC

leonroy wrote: post #51

oliwarner wrote: post #43

Getting a bit bored of leaks, press releases and even specs. The proof of a CPU is in how it benchmarks across real workloads. We're 2-3 weeks away from global release. People buying components NOW are exactly the sort of people AMD should be working their socks off to stop buying Intel parts. But instead of any firm performance figures, we have rumour. The only reason I can imagine AMD is still keeping the press und…

I think the issue might more be related to yields and distribution. Even when AMD were outpacing Intel (many years back) they struggled to meet demand and manufacture enough chips. There was a great article back then too about why Apple and Dell weren't going all in on AMD chips and whilst sweeteners from Intel is part of it, a lot of it had to do with Dell or Apple's typical volume far outpacing what AMD could relia…

> they struggled to meet demand and manufacture enough chips.

I would think, and hope, that the situation is better now. Back then, AMD was manufacturing their chips in house, now they're manufactured by GlobalFoundries and TSMC.

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#55

Post by kogepathic » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:50 AM UTC

mrb wrote: post #3

I should have linked to the second page: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_numb... Relevant quote: "AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor. Analysts and even Intel engineers in the session said the Zen core is clearly competitive though many confidential variables will determine whether the die a…

> AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor.

We need to compare apples to apples. AMD's Zen chips have no IGP, while most Intel chips are shipping with an Intel GPU.

If you look at an Intel die shot, about half of the area is taken by the GPU. [0]

Since the current batch of Zen SKUs lacks any IGP, I'd be worried if they weren't able to come up with a die that's smaller than Intel's with an IGP...

[0] https://www.techpowerup.com/215333/intel-skylake-die-layout-...

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#56

Post by vegabook » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:52 AM UTC

personally hoping for ECC support on the AMD consumer chips, because Xeon pricing right now is just a total and utter ripoff. For the growing in-memory database world this would be huge.

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#57

Post by snovv_crash » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:58 AM UTC

chx wrote: post #6

There's a lot that goes into CPU performance. Go to http://wccftech.com/ryzen-smaller-die-intel-zen-architecture... and search for "Table courtesy of the Linley Group" without quotes to see an extremely interesting table: http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Zen-Doubl... > Intel has a double precision IPC of 16 FLOPs per Clock with Skylake as well as 2x 256 bit FMA whereas Zen only has 8 FLOPs per clock…

Skylake might have 2x 256 bit FMA, but it still only has 1x 256 bit non-fused add, the same as Zen.

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#58

Post by snovv_crash » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 11:01 AM UTC

kogepathic wrote: post #55

mrb wrote: post #3

I should have linked to the second page: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_numb... Relevant quote: "AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor. Analysts and even Intel engineers in the session said the Zen core is clearly competitive though many confidential variables will determine whether the die a…

> AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor. We need to compare apples to apples. AMD's Zen chips have no IGP, while most Intel chips are shipping with an Intel GPU. If you look at an Intel die shot, about half of the area is taken by the GPU. [0] Since the current batch of Zen SKUs lacks any IGP, I'd be worried if they…

The i7-6900k doesn't have an IGP. Besides which, they are already comparing just the areas of the cores (and their L2 cache).

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#59

Post by kogepathic » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 11:04 AM UTC

snovv_crash wrote: post #58

kogepathic wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor. We need to compare apples to apples. AMD's Zen chips have no IGP, while most Intel chips are shipping with an Intel GPU. If you look at an Intel die shot, about half of the area is taken by the GPU. [0] Since the current batch of Zen SKUs lacks any IGP, I'd be worried if they…

The i7-6900k doesn't have an IGP. Besides which, they are already comparing just the areas of the cores (and their L2 cache).

> they are already comparing just the areas of the cores (and their L2 cache)

Thanks, this wasn't obvious from the linked article.

Re: Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC

#60

Post by throw2016 » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 11:19 AM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #43

Getting a bit bored of leaks, press releases and even specs. The proof of a CPU is in how it benchmarks across real workloads. We're 2-3 weeks away from global release. People buying components NOW are exactly the sort of people AMD should be working their socks off to stop buying Intel parts. But instead of any firm performance figures, we have rumour. The only reason I can imagine AMD is still keeping the press und…

Given what Intel already did with the Pentium G4560 perhaps it would be wise to keep everything under wraps until release rather than give Intel 3 weeks of 'play time' to ruin the launch.